Carl Louis Schwendler
Carl Louis Schwendler was a German electrician and one of the first proponents of the Tungsten based incandescent light bulb. He also published an influential textbook on telegraphs, and worked in British India at a senior post in the Telegraph Department. He was involved in setting up telegraphic communication between Agra and Calcutta solving problems in transmission of submerged cables. He was commissioned by the Railways to perform a feasibility study of lighting Indian Railway stations by electric lamp.
Schwendler was a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 1867 a zoo was proposed by Joseph Fayrer and the idea was again raised by Schwendler in 1873. He helped in the setting up of this garden and offered his small menagerie to create the nucleus of the Alipore Zoological Gardens in Kolkata. This zoo became in 1875 the home of Robert Clive's tortoise, Adwaita, thought to be the longest-living animal in the world when he died in 2006 at an estimated of age 255. A memorial to Schwendler was erected at the zoo premises in 1883.
